Call of Duty: Ghosts

Infinity Ward Reveals A Wealth Of Multiplayer Improvements

During a recent livestream press event, Activision revealed the new multiplayer modes that will be featured in Call of Duty: Ghosts. Activision is calling this the biggest overhaul to multiplayer since the first Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Here's a breakdown of what you'll be playing this November.

After showing a trailer that featured dudes blowing each other up, calling down airstrikes, and using drones to firebomb enemies, Activision went into detail about Call of Duty: Ghosts new multiplayer upgrades. Here are the highlights:

Customization: In the past, you customized a class, now you'll be able to customize a soldier who you'll journey with across the breadth of your Call of Duty experience. Ghost features over 20 thousand customization possibilities, including details of how your soldier looks, and whether you are male or female. You can customize a team of up to 10 soldiers, who can all have different skillsets, and you'll earn experience for each soldier you play. This is important because one of the new modes in the game, Squads, allows you to let the AI control your teammates as you play alongside them in various multiplayer matches.

New modes: In addition to the aforementioned Squads mode, Activision showed off another new mode called Cranked, where players face a countdown clock that ticks towards their death. Players can add to their clock with each kill, and as they kill their movements speed up, resulting in a fast paced, frantic match. Another mode, called Search and Rescue has players resurrecting their friends. When players die, they drop their dog tags. If a team member can get to those tags they'll resurrect that player, but if an opponent gets there first, the downed player will be out for the rest of the round.

Dynamic World: Ghost's maps won't be static areas like in previous games, but will be fluid environments that change as the battle ranges on. Players can open up new lines of sight by blowing holes in walls. During the trailer, we watch one player shoot out the tanks at a gas station and cause the station's roof to collapse on top of several opponents. Traversing these environments will also be smoother thanks to a number of systems that Infinity Ward has added to the game. Ghosts features a new mantling system and a lean system that lets you lean around cover without pressing a button. A knee slide also allow players zip around the map and slide into cover quickly.

Mobile: Activision is hoping to expand your Call of Duty experience outside of your consoles will a new Call of Duty mobile app that will integrate with your online profile. With the new app you can check your loadouts, profiles, squads, and prestige level. This app also adds some second screen functionality by allowing you to pick your loadout for your next spawn while playing the game.

All told, Ghost features 7 new game modes, 30 new weapons, and a host of new killstreaks. A new
weapon class called marksman rifles now bridges the gap between rifles and
sniper rifles. We're getting our hands on the game's multiplayer at a special Call of Duty: Ghosts event, so stay tuned for impressions. If you're interested in checking the game out yourself, Activision will be touring Ghost through 10 cities around the world before launch, including: London, Dubai, Sydney, Sao Paolo and Paris.

BF4 still looks like it'll be more fun. Customizing characters in Call of Duty is not necessary, as you don't really pay attention to what characters look like when you kill them in 1 second. Appearance doesn't even matter in Halo but it's even less significant in Call of Duty. Dynamic maps have already been in Battlefield and they are much more impactful. Sound in BF still blows COD out of the water. In BF takes more skill to kill people because you have to control recoil and it takes more bullets to kill someone. More tactics are involved in BF. BF is just a more satisfying game. So BF4 is my choice this fall. They are trying to be innovative with COD: Ghosts, but all the features they added are outdated and should have been added after MW2. They've focused so much on making the same game for several years and when they finally add something new, it still feels old. Sorry COD, maybe when you become truly innovative I will give you another try.

My biggest problem with these changes is that they are super basic things that shouldn't even surprise anyone. These are the kinds of things that should be taken for granted in a game that "leads" it's respective genre. WIth the ridiculous fan base that CoD has and the fact that much of that fan base will buy the game every year regardless Infinity ward and Activision should be pushing things that are well and truly innovative and unique not touting "emotional investments" to dogs and the ability to make your multiplayer persona female. It's disheartening to see such a large franchise squander the nearly unprecedented position they have as a driving force in their genre.
So at this point I could be considered unimpressed, but not completely uninterested. I'd be willing to dip my toe into the waters and see what it's like if I had a friend willing to lend me their copy, but I definitely will be taking my $60 elsewhere.

I am actually impressed that the developers are changing the formula a little bit, however it kinda bugs me that their knife animations look like battlefield's..... i might come back to this franchise after quitting a few games back if the single player is actually playable and the enemy AI isn't a complete joke.

Squads Mode sold me on the game all by itself. I love the idea of getting to create a whole squad of custom characters and then battle alongside them against either other players or A.I. enemies while still enjoying all the benefits of multiplayer like ranking up and perks.

"Bridging the gap between rifles and sniper rifels???" There was never a gap! Their sniper rifles were always just full zoomed acogs. The barrett only zoomed 2x! They are probably just porting some from each original class and hopefully revamping the sniper rifles to actually be able to, well... snipe.

Wow I'm actually excited about this game. Finally I can be a woman in cod to represent my gender. This is something they should have added a long time ago, but never did. I love the customization option too.

They officially have me interested in CoD again. I haven't played one since MW2 and have since gotten rid of all of mine but character customization looks pretty fun. I'm sure I'll half to deal with cheesy unrealistic set pieces and raging ten year olds but whatevs. Not much you can do about it.